Most of vanilla’s world content was soloable (outside of world bosses and a handful of elites) so I don’t really see the issue here. It was slightly more tedious and time consuming though just for the sake of being those things.
You got me here.
The biggest offender of social interaction ruining besides your average entitled man child being obnoxious is flight and they seem to be doing their best to hold that off every chance they get. Granted the damage was already done and they can’t remove it fully without taking a major hit.
I do interact with people socially all the time in the open world so I don’t actually notice this all that much. I guess I will come rev time and flight starts.
I will give you that I actually am apposed to the phasing tech and would very much like to see it go away with more aggressive server mergers. I’m 50/50 on group finder as while I understand it’s a plague on community building, it also saves an enormous amount of time vetting dozens of people which more than half will probably be absolute intolerable jerks that you’ll be stuck with for most of a run.
You shouldn’t need an incentive to want to interact with another player. I do world bosses and hunt rares in groups that I find in the world all the time when I’m out questing. Sometimes I’ll just flat out start a conversation with strangers in the middle of nowhere. That’s the beauty of being social, I don’t need them to bread crumb me to those interactions as I’m quite capable of doing them all on my own when I choose.
If I’m doing a normal quest I’ll invite others around me or be invited by other social people. Do we need to group to do such quests? no, but we also didn’t need to group for over 90% of the open world content from the very beginning.
Their endgame incentives are quite clear in that you form parties and tackle ever increasing dungeon/raid difficulty. Really nothing to add here as it’s been the same bread and butter for over a decade. The only difference is they made dungeons actually relevant for more than a single month.
So maybe i’m just not having the same issues you’re having?
Maybe if the game in its current state is so bad your attitude might be what’s limiting your social interaction?
My attitude has nothing to do with it. It’s good practice in game design to push its players into interaction by designing the world in a way that welcomes it. Vanillas way of doing this was danger. There was plenty of vanilla world content that was not solo content, as mob density was a problem for many quests that was only solved by kiting, and elites hit VERY hard in classic compared to today’s game in solo play. Some classes did not have easy ways to heal.
The “community” you speak of is actually relatively quite small.
And in any case, they don’t want people to spontaneously form communities with other players who have the same interests and goals. They wreck communities at the drop of a hat.
A persons attitude towards something has a very big impact on their experience and the interactions on others around them. Negative mindsets tend to always lead to negative experiences.
And the world still has plenty of things that push people together. It might not be the pinnacle of game design you once perceived it to be, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
More like tedious grind.
The biggest threat I felt in vanilla was falling asleep in my chair while leveling or farming in elite areas for gold.
And yet I did most of it solo anyways. Take the old alterac mountain ogre elite quest for example, I soloed it as a rogue, paladin, hunter, priest and mage.
I did this for most of my elite ranged quests because the server I played on was horde dominant and I honestly seen about as much people in my questing areas as I do now (I actually see more now).
I kited some things if I had the option, but most of the time I just pulled smarter and used all the tools available to me to get the job done. I’m sure plenty of people struggled as player skill isn’t a set bar. I just wasn’t one of those people and I did it on an assortment of different classes to the same result.
While I enjoyed vanilla I don’t consider its tedious design on game play/grinding to be all that great. I understand that some do enjoy the super slow take 20-40 minutes to do a quest. I’m just not one of those people and I never have been.
Edit
Keep in mind they might actually be trying to bring some of what you believe to be lost back with the level squish they seem to be planning. Obviously they must think they can change up the open world experience if they toned down the levels and numbers.
I’m pretty skeptical about it, but I’m open to see it happen and experience the outcome.
I’m not dumb enough to brush your points off as just opinion. The collapse of the mmo genre was precipitated under gameplay methods that you at least somewhat are preferential towards. In any case you are arguing for a failing, non-creative, and lazy modern system meant to string players along, rather than try to be an excellent game to a decently large niche of players. We aren’t debating the semantics of personal preference when it comes to player interaction mechanics.
The entire introduction of M+ was disgusting for the MMORPG genre. Not only is it the sort of Diablo 3 treadmill garbage (do the same thing but slightly higher for slightly better reward), but it also attempts to fully e-sport PVE content with who can beat M+ the fastest. Mythic raiding was bad enough, Mythic dungeons (specifically M+; the idea of a “nightmare mode” dungeon is fine and one I have long thought WoW needed) are even worse.
I’m really getting sick of this “woe is me” crap everyone is spewing on the fact that you can’t get mythic level gear in mythic+. Ok first off, they don’t CATER to mythic raiders, the amount of resources and time dedicated to mythic raiding is a hell of a lot more then mythic plus. It requires not only 20 people logged on ready with everything updated and doing everything required to level your neck to max level to obtain azerite traits before 8.2 but now requiring them to hardcore grind neck levels to essence traits. Then you need back up raiders on top of the 20+ just in incase life happens and one of your main 20 can’t come on, or someone is performing poorly and affecting the raids progression. The resources put into raiding with 100+ wipes on one boss and then the flasks,prepots, vantus runes cauldrons and feasts costs more then what you’d put into a month of doing a weekly plus. You say "oh we’ll be mythic ilvl in 10-12 weeks. Ok, do you realize it takes most mythic guilds ON AVERAGE a week sometimes 2 to kill ONE mythic boss? So you’re expecting to get a mythic level in the time it takes us to clear an entire mythic raid? Mythic doesn’t have flex like heroic or normal so if you don’t have the people, you don’t raid or trying to progress with less people which makes it even more difficult compared to the whole 5 people required to do a mythic plus. The average wow players don’t push beyond what’s needed to gain the max ilvl gear from the weekly dungeon, only certain groups push beyond a 10-12 because it’s “too hard” and no gain to those just using them to gear. Once people are geared, then most ask for absolutely ridiculous ilvls to carry their alts and so they don’t even have to try which is causing them to become more painful the higher gear is from them for weeklys. They’re not catering to mythic raiders, casual players and those who don’t go beyond what’s an average requirement are making things even more impossible to those trying to gear anything including alts. So no, you don’t deserve mythic raiding level gear for doing one 10 dungeons every week.
Also, stop comparing all mythic guilds to ones like Method, that group is a small maybe 2% of actual mythic raiding guilds. They raid as a CAREER, most mythic raiders have full time jobs, kids and families and lives outside of wow and don’t get money from rewards and benefactors for being world first or have 10’s of thousands of subscribers on twitch from multiple raiders.
Lets not forget mythic raiders have a chance to acquire 415 level gear with the stats of their choice. The rng is not nearly as gross as mythic+ weekly chest which is just a crap shoot or using a seal of a specific raid bosses vs an entire dungeon.
Mythic players have a huge edge over the weekly mythic+ chest player.
Sure there are plenty of 413/414 players running around out there, I am going to guess but I am pretty sure they are playing item level and not stats.
Item level was a stupid conversation when it was gear score during WOTLK. The fact this conversation is still happening almost a decade later is hilarious.
If anything its just proof to blizzard no matter what they do, there will always be a small portion of their population that will cry foul.
Any mythic raider that is seriously complaining about the mythic + gear needs to get a life and go outside.
The reason why I do not care about your mythic raiding woes is because it is designed to be exclusive and no one in the mythic raiding scene wants changes to their precious system.
For example I would want to remove the raid ID locks and allow for cross realm mythic raiding from the release of the raid. That would solve your 20 person limit issue and allow you to progress with numerous groups of people. No one in the mythic scene wants to let that happen because they fear it will signal the end of guilds in favor of pug & community champions. Which is hilarious because they also laugh at my face and say there is 0% chance a mythic pug would get anywhere. So you cannot have it both ways. You cannot have all these restrictions on mythic raiding to protect your mythic guilds then complain that mythic raiding is tougher to find a group for because of these restrictions. When I say you I refer to the general mythic raiding population.
When the playing field is even and people can que up for mythic raiding in public cross realm groups as soon as the raid releases then I will care more. People were tired of all those pointless restrictions and we got mythic plus. Mythic plus is way better and the mythic raiding community hates that. They want to add more grind and prestige to the hours of work they are putting into raiding by brining down mythic plus which takes alot of focus and group effort also. So i do not buy your argument. I hear alot more of woe is me from the mythic community for their own self inflicted wounds.
my m+ raider isnt a healer it’s a DH… and it was at 404. it’s also very new. hit 120 maybe a month ago and i’ve been 404 for like two weeks i think. it was extremely fast.
Not sure who is 407 or 416… you might have me mixed up with someone else.
The reason I dont have many m+ drops on my pally is because i don’t like healing m+ on my paly. I do a weekly and that’s it. I raided since the start of BoD and it took a bit ot get to 415. I’d be higher but sadly itemization requires me to use lower ilvl items for holy pally because the stats are better.
The point is that it took me 3 months ot get mythic geared on my pally not doing many m+…
It took me like 2-3 weeks to get within 10 ilvls… literally spamming m+ on my DH very moderately. I know people who soley do m+ and within a month and a half are ilvl 415…
I think you’re the one not understanding bud. I know how an average works. It’s pretty simple. The point is that M raiding is difficult, it’s slow, and there is a lockout… Chances for titan forges are not high week to week. So to get to an average ilvl of 415, like my main… it takes time. Especially when you start locking out bosses at the end to push for kills before the time runs out.
A m+ 10 is a joke to most people who are skilled. It takes roughly 2 weeks with catchup gear and emmisaries and such to get from a fresh 120 to like ilvl 404. my DH is virtual proof of it. Once you hit 400 ilvl… you can spam lvl 10’s very quickly , pretty effortlessly and not only do you get a 410 with a chance to warforge, but you get unlimited chances to warforge and titanforge a 400 piece from the end of the dungeon.
The difficulty for a 10 is pretty low. The difficulty for raiding isnt that low.
Hence… m raiding gear gets devalued because with a bit of luck and some spamming you can easily get to a m raiding level ilvl…
it’s really not a hard concept. this tier my DH and pally will both be kept up with at the same time and i’m 100% positive my dh will end up more geared from just M+ way faster than my pally.
Yeah because the game offers a variety of catch up mechanics to get to 400 and I am sure you ran all those mythic +s with low level people working your way up the gear ladder.
We all know mythic players only help other other mythic players. Its the same as raider IO. Hence why you see ridiculous groups asking for 1800 io to do a 10…
These people offer nothing to the community and they are the ones mostly butt hurt about gear.
Frankly no one cares about mythic raiders that only help or play with other mythic raiders.
I never found mythic+ challenging and it’s because it’s under a time gate with greater health pools and damage.
I would prefer if they added more mechanics to bosses as you progress with each level. That would make it more fun but farming mythic+ for weeks again and again for some stupid little score on raider io just sounds boring.
Mythic raiders just have a focus. It takes a lot to raid mythic. Like right now i’m spamming rep and AP on my pally to get a 55 neck and both my rep essences as high as possible… it’s always funny how non mythic raiders think this is some elite group… we just put the time in and the grind in. and when you’re in a mythic guild it’s basically all or nothing…
and for your record. for 2 xpacs I ran with a weekend pug raid group on alliance that struggled in heroic and to get 10’s done. Sat and Sun 4 hours each day i would use my mythic geared toon to help them push aotc each tier and get weekly 10’s. if the guy i ran with didn’t turn into a psycho i would have continued that run.
At the same time I understand how mythic raiders wouldn’t wanna help lowbies. We take the time to learn mechanics, we grind way more than anyone else and we push contnet by wiping… a lot… so yea… sometimes they dont like doing lower content.
I’ve pugged most of my keys. never have i ever ran into a group needing an 1800io for a 10… usually get in 10’s with around a 1k io… which you get form completing 10’s.